


Yellow or Blue, Both Beautiful

by Diary



Category: Oz (TV), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Allison Argent & Vernon Boyd & Erica Reyes Live, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Friendship/Love, Late Night Conversations, On Hiatus, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Tags May Change, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27292051
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diary/pseuds/Diary
Summary: AU. “Chris Argent, meet Chris Keller. He’s going to help you get acclimated to Em City.” WIP.
Relationships: Chris Argent & Chris Keller (Oz), Chris Keller & Ryan O'Reily
Comments: 2
Kudos: 2





	Yellow or Blue, Both Beautiful

“This might be interesting,” CO Murphy says. “Chris Argent, meet Chris Keller. He’s going to help you get acclimated to Em City.”

Keller offers his hand. “You still married?”

He gave his ring to Allison before he was sentenced, but he’s beginning to think the thin white line will never fade.

Shaking the hand, he answers, “No.”

Murphy leaves them once they get to Keller’s pod, and inside, he starts to put his stuff down on the bottom bunk.

“No,” Keller says. “That’s mine.”

He hates the uncertainty running through him. In places like this, humans can kill humans faster than any shifter can, can sniff out weakness of any sort with accuracy that goes beyond the preternatural. The best way to survive is pay one’s dues to those higher on the social hierarchy without giving the impression this is done out of fear.

“I’ve had the bottom since I got here. I’m used to it.”

He sets his stuff on the top.

“We don’t get forks, spoons, or knives this week. And today was soup day.” Keller pulling at his own shirt to reveal a stain makes the statement less disorienting. “Welcome to Oz, baby.”

“You had to drink the soup?”

“Nah.” Stripping off his shirt, Keller digs through the woefully small pile of clean laundry until he finds a white undershirt.

There’s a bullet wound near Keller’s heart, and there are several scars on his back. Human.

“We do get sporks. When I came here, I had my arm in a cast, and everything was solid and hard. It’s really funny, sometimes, how things change and don’t.”

Suddenly, a sharp, wolfish grin crosses Keller’s face. “Here’s the rundown, Argent: I have it in for every Aryan in this place, I only do laundry when I have to, and you’re probably going to hear a lot about a Beecher. Tobias Beecher. He and I, well, we had some very interesting times together. Careful what you say when it comes to him, especially if you say anything when any of them are nearby.”

He nods. “What happened to him?”

“Parole.”

There’s no sarcasm or deceit he can detect in this answer.

“I’m going to the gym. You can come, or you can stay here until lunch.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Keller nods. “You wrestle?”

…

“O’Reily,” Keller cheerfully greets a man lifting weights.

Subtle surgical scars on the chest, he notes. Most likely human, too.

“K-boy.” Then, looking at him, O’Reily does something of a double-take. “This McManus’s idea of a joke?”

“Who the hell knows?” Keller slaps O’Reily’s hand before breaking into a grin that reminds him too much of Peter Hale. “It gets better, though. O’Reily, meet Chris Argent.”

He can tell, for a second, O’Reily isn’t sure whether to believe this or not. “Oh, you have got to be...”

As the two talk, he begins doing push-ups.

After O’Reily is through expressing his disbelief, he nods to him. “Hey, man. Ryan O’Reily. You got any Irish in you?”

“Might want to clarify that that is not an invitation or even a question of which way you swing sexually,” Keller says. “O’Reily here has been-”

He has the feeling O’Reily’s response is also not to be taken as an indication O’Reily has any sexual interest in Keller, and after O’Reily has pushed a laughing Keller down onto the floor, he further confirms this by saying, “Unlike most people in this shithole, I’d never go for a man, no matter how desperate. Dr Gloria Nathan is- I love her. But she’s married.”

“Oughta just whack him,” is Keller’s bored response. Accepting O’Reily’s hand, he heaves himself back onto a bench.

“If you really believed that, there wouldn’t be a grade-school teacher-”

Giving O’Reily a warning look, Keller deliberately focuses back on him. “Anyway, do ya have any Irish in you, Argent?”

He shrugs. “My family came from France in the 1800s, and some of them are still there.”

“French.” Both O’Reily’s tone and the words that follow makes it clear he’s unimpressed. “Shit, man,” reaching over, he presses against Keller’s bullet wound, “McManus straight wants you dead.”

The touch is almost brotherly in protectiveness, and he realises, though there probably is nothing sexual between the two, there is some sort of genuine friendship.

Shrugging the touch away, Keller resumes lifting weights. “I don’t think this one’ll break the way that pussy did.”

He’s told the story of a Frenchman who got a hold of a gun, suffered a psychotic break, and shot everyone unlucky enough to be in his path.

“So, what’s your story, Argent,” O’Reily asks.

“My father drove my wife to suicide, and I killed him.”

The two look between one another.

“Huh.” Keller shakes his head, and his voice has a tinge of weariness when he says, “Just tell me you don’t have any dead kids.”

“No. One daughter, very much alive. She’s in her first year of college. I waited until she was to do it.”

He can’t count on anyone in here if his life is in danger, but based on their respective body language, curiosity mixed with vague approval from O’Reily and amusement interwoven with what might be empathy from Keller, he knows he possibly just made two allies.

…

After dinner, he calls Satomi.

“Hello, Christopher.”

He almost asks how she knew it was him, but then, he remembers caller ID is a thing. “How’s my daughter?”

“Physically, Allison’s doing better. But her mental state-”

“Is she suicidal? Going after Derek or the others?”

“No,” she answers. “In fact, she and Erica were able to have a civil discussion earlier. However, what you did, what you’re still doing-”

“Someday, she might have a child of her own. I have no idea what in the hell any kids of hers might end up being, but if she does, she might be able to understand this. Unless that day comes, however, it’s best you help her understand this is the right thing. I made a hard choice, one I don’t like anymore than she does, but it was for the best.”

“You keep assuming I agree with your actions. I don’t.”

He represses a sigh. “You would have once.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I would have agreed with your father being killed once, and even now-” She does sigh. “But you are forcing her to lie.”

“I’m forcing her to be quiet, not state an untruth. And I haven’t noticed you advocating for an exposure of your kind, your world, to regular humans.”

“Christopher, she’s suffering. I do want to help her, but until you let her do what she thinks is right-”

“She’s a nineteen-year-old girl, still a teenager, who not even two years ago almost died. Her life changed forever that night. Physically, emotionally, psychologically, possibly even her very soul. I wanted him dead, Satomi.”

“I’ll keep trying to help her,” is the weary response. “Erica wants to send you a cookie bouquet. If you want it, I don’t have any objection to making sure her name, the bakery’s card, and her picture get lost before it arrives.”

“Her picture?”

“She’s still seventeen. It’s a picture of her working on Boyd’s birthday cake. She thinks it makes her look professional.”

He realises he’s sad he won’t see it. He can roughly imagine it, her wearing her apron, hazel eyes sparkling the way they do whenever Boyd is anywhere near her, possibly her face or hands smudged with frosting or flour.

Or maybe she does look serious and poised, confident for one so young, giving the impression she can easily whip up anything from an ice-cream cake to a batch of scones.

“That’d be nice. I’ll contact her when it arrives, tell her thank you myself.”

“Take care of yourself, Christopher. Now more than ever, Allison needs you to stay alive and in one piece.”

“Yeah. Thank you, Satomi.”

…

Keller glances up from his book. “Talk to your daughter?”

“No. A family friend. Allison, my daughter, and I aren’t exactly on speaking terms at the moment.” He climbs up onto his bunk.

“Do you have nightmares?”

The question throws him. “Not usually, no.”

“Good. One of my podmates would wake up screaming, crying, panting a lot. Hacks objected to my methods of trying to lessen this.”

He knows better than to ask. “Well, my nightmares have never caused any of those reactions.”

“Yeah, mine either. What’d you do before you whacked your old man?”

“I’d be in Unit J if I hadn’t been picked for Em City.”

“Forget I asked.”

There’s a knock on the door, and a black man in a wheelchair comes in. “Keller, we need to talk about your latest order.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” Down below, Keller sits up. “Damn it, Hill, I liked it better when the Aryans were running the mailroom. What possible objection-”

“And as happy I am Beecher’s out, I liked it better when he was here to reign your ass in. Caffeine pills are technically a drug.”

“So is coffee and most sodas, but the hacks are usually good about not getting their panties in a twist when we manage to get some.”

“McManus thinks you want to poison Saïd.”

“Caffeine sure as shit ain’t poisonous.”

“To a man with hypertension, it could be.”

“I don’t even know what-”

“His blood pressure and heart. Too much caffeine would be really bad.”

“How firm is McManus holding on this?”

“You’re lucky your ass ain’t in the hole, man. If you drop it now, he’ll get distracted soon enough. Chances of Robson throwing a shit fit about us confiscating his ex-wife’s present are looking very likely.”

“Fine. For the record, however, I wasn’t planning to do anything to that...”

Whoever Saïd is, Keller has such an undisguised low opinion of him that he can’t blame McManus and Hill for their assumption.

“Anyway, Hill, this is Chris Argent. Argent, this is Augustus Hill, four-wheeled dictator of the mailroom.”

Sliding down, he shakes Hill’s hand.

“Hey, man. I don’t envy you being Keller’s roomie.”

Getting back in his bunk, Keller says, “I ain’t so bad. O’Reily and Meaney never had no problems with me, and when he didn’t hate me, Toby loved me.”

There’s a brief softness to Hill’s eyes at this, and he can’t be sure, but he imagines ‘Toby’ is ‘Tobias Beecher’. The one paroled.

“Meaney was the only one who didn’t mind; that one can sleep through a tsunami and didn’t have to deal with you during the day. Everyone else from hacks on down had a problem with you constantly staring down into this pod.”

“Old news, Hill. Let it drop.”

“Alright.” Hill gives him a small smile. “Nice to meet you, Argent. Take care.”

“You too.”

…

Someday, he might learn to not underestimate Erica.

She’s Derek Hale’s beta, and the one thing Satomi would actually agree with Gerard on is: The Hale pack was always a dramatic bunch. Talia freely ran around Beacon Hills in wolf form, and Peter was- Peter.

Best not to think of how he was before the fire temporarily destroyed his sanity.

He doesn’t know how Laura, Derek, and their little sister, Cora, was before the fire. After, from what he’s gathered, Laura kept a low-profile.

Derek, though, is a combination of his mother and uncle, powerful and intuitive like Talia, bitter and cunning like Peter. Of course, he chose a bitter, tiny little girl with plenty of creativity as one of his first betas.

“A little warning would have been nice,” Hill grumbles as two men set the absurdly large cookie bouquet on a table near his pod.

“I’m sorry. I knew one was coming, but I had no idea- I expected it to be normal size.”

He also expected it to be filled with either chocolate chip, bran, or a mixture of the two.

Instead, there’s quite possibly a little of every cookie in existence, and they’re all carefully wrapped in plastic with clear labels listing the ingredients.

Erica’s uncle is a priest who transports donated food to shelters, and there are strict laws about what can be given to shelters. Perfectly good, healthy food that isn’t the right colour, weight, or shape is often rejected, and her uncle’s solution while he continually tries to change these guidelines is to express mail the food to Erica for her use in her cooking and baking endeavours.

Since she started working in a local bakery, he imagines she’s gotten access to even more food.

However, he can’t imagine where she found such a big basket, how she afforded so much plastic, or her taking the time to carefully apply said plastics and labels.

Then, he remembers Boyd, and he can easily imagine Boyd coming over during his free time and/or staying up late into the night to carefully wrap the cookies and apply the labels.

Keller’s voice asking, “Is that oatmeal raisin,” breaks into his thoughts, and to his bewilderment, he sees Keller has already accumulated a small pile.

His confusion turns to pity when O’Reily grabs Keller’s wrist, and O’Reily’s voice is quieter than normal, “Hey, K-boy, you aren’t going to be able to send these out.”

“Fine.” Keller pushes the pile away. “But I want some of the half-moon ones.”

There’s a crowd around the table, and looking murderous, Murphy is standing nearby.

He doesn’t know if this was done in an attempt to build him up or if Erica was hoping he’d become most hated inmate.

Digging through, he says, “I get some of the chocolate chip ones, and I take no responsibility for any fights breaking out. Or for anyone stupid enough to not read the labels.”

“That mean you’re sharing,” Murphy asks.

Getting enough to last him for a few days, assuming he can protect them from being stolen, he nods. “Yeah.”

“Alright, hey,” Murphy uses his night-stick to push a man trying to reach over away, “we’re doing this orderly. Everybody wanting cookies, Form a line! You each get two for right now.”

“Here, Rebadow,” O’Reily says. “The ones with the blue stickers are diabetic-friendly.”

He suddenly finds himself on the receiving end of Keller’s piercing stare, and unnervingly, it takes a lot of effort to not squirm.

“So, you had someone besides your wife. I’m guessing they’re a she.”

“What?” He can’t fully stop the shudder. “No. These are courtesy of my daughter’s classmate. Former, actually. A seventeen-year-old girl. She wants to own her own bakery someday.”

…

The cookies gain him both attention and a measure of respect.

He chooses who he has actual conversations with carefully.

There’s a mixture of chaos and routine in Oz, and so far, he’s mostly managed to stay on the latter side.

He ends up doing both his and Keller’s laundry, and he wonders how in the hell Victoria always seemed happy to do his, hers, and Allison’s, never mind when Gerard and/or Kate would visit. Before he met her, he did his own, and after her death, he and Allison would sometimes take turns, sometimes do their own, but if not for him not wanting to deal with the consequences his podmate being in solitary or the hole might bring, he’d let Keller run around in his underwear or even naked.

If this was his only complaint, he’d realise how lucky he was not to get sent somewhere worse.

Unfortunately, however, Keller is somehow managing to slowly kill off members of the Aryan brotherhood one-by-one.

Whatever this says about his moral code, and he’s sure Allison would say a lot, and Gerard definitely would have when alive, he wouldn’t particularly care. The only reason he does is: It’s an open secret around the prison that Keller is. No one knows how, no one can prove it, but no one, as far as he can tell, doubts it.

He did, at first, but then, in different ways, both Hill and Murphy spelled it out for him.

When someone does find proof, he might be in dangerous waters simply due to being Keller’s podmate.

Finding O’Reily in the computer lab, he sits down. “I need to talk to you about Keller.”

Scoffing, O’Reily fiddles with his headphones. “God, I hope this conversation isn’t about to be familiar. What’s he done? You know, me and him did good together. Of course, I always had a plan on what my alibi would be for his time of death. Sure you don’t want to just do that? You seem like someone who could kill more than just your old man if necessary.”

“I’m not an Aryan. I admit I had my- prejudices back in the day. Maybe I’ll never fully be rid of some of them. But I’ve never agreed with what the Aryans stand for, and I don’t feel any remorse or sympathy when I hear another Aryan’s body has been found. What I do feel is worry over the fact everyone and their visiting grandmother knows that Keller- has very specific thoughts and feelings about these Aryans. How they died. Which ones will be next.”

Sighing, O’Reily leans back, and he notices there’s a genuine tiredness to O’Reily’s eyes. “Schillinger. That Nazi filth dies, and only the really stupid or really smart Aryans will end up mysteriously dead.”

He wonders if there’s anyway to, if it’s even a good idea to-

“Yeah,” some amusement comes back into O’Reily’s eyes, “I know you’d never suggest such a thing. But that thing that might have abstractly crossed your mind, Argent? It ain’t happening. Murphy would be glad to see Schillinger go down, but Murphy is also a true blue. It’s his job to keep Schillinger alive, and he’s smart enough that it’d take a lot to get past him.”

There’s some warning when O’Reily continues, “And I’m no rat, but me and Murphy are both black Irish. He’s nice to my baby bro when Cyril visits, and he and Gloria are friends. Every single piece of shit Aryan can go down with only Schillinger left in solitary if it means Murphy stays standing.”

“Are you up for telling me why Keller hates this Schillinger so much?”

“Beecher,” came out so fast, so automatic, that he’s not sure if O’Reily meant to say it or not.

“It’s always Beecher,” O’Reily continues. “You heard some things about him?”

“He and Keller were podmates. A former lawyer who killed a little girl while driving drunk and got paroled after six years. I take it he liked oatmeal raisin cookies?”

O’Reily nods.“Schillinger brought them together, and Schillinger tore them apart. Keller could get over this, but he can’t get over the constant threat to Beech’s life. I’ll give this to law-boy: No one else has ever managed to get the best of Schillinger the way he did. Several times. Result is, Schillinger is obsessed with him. Wants him dead, might, just might, settle for breaking him in a way that can never be fixed instead.”

“And Beecher’s that important to Keller?”

O’Reily laughs. “Yo, if Beecher was still here, you and Keller might not have ever even talked to one another, let alone been roomies.”

He hesitates. “Were they lovers?”

“There was sex. And then, there was Beecher getting Keller off death row for crimes we all know Keller committed. Before that, K-boy went to Cedar Junction, prison in Massachusetts, because, he lied about ordering a hit on this asshole who killed Beecher’s eight-year-old son.”

Laughing again, O’Reily shakes his head. “No one’s ever been able to prove Beecher ordered the hit. And if he did, he was smart enough they never will, either. The scumbag who killed his boy, that was Hank Schillinger, our Vern Schillinger’s son. On orders from his dad, of course. If I were Keller, I woulda just whacked Vern, but instead, he painted a target on his own back, and then, got out of Schillinger’s reach so that Schillinger would focus on trying to get to him instead of going after Beecher.”

“Thank you, O’Reily.”

“Yo, if that little girl your daughter knows is going to send anymore cookies, I’d be willing-”

Standing up, he supplies, “Macadamia nuts and crunchy peanut butter.”

“Hey, it’s weird to me, too, but that girl’s a genius. Never would have thought such a strange combination would be so good. Seriously, I get the biggest amount of any that comes in, and I’ll owe you.”


End file.
